Sir Sandy Crombie to chair fintech lender LendingCrowd

Former Standard Life chief executive Sir Sandy Crombie has joined the board of LendingCrowd, the Edinburgh-based fintech lender, as its chairman.

CEO Stuart Lunn (left) with Sir Sandy Crombie. Picture: Stewart Attwood

Crombie, who is also a former non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland, joined Standard Life in 1966 as a trainee actuary and was appointed head of Standard Life Investments in 1994. He became group chief executive of Standard Life in 2004 and retired from his post in 2009.

Stuart Lunn, founder and chief executive of LendingCrowd, said: “Attracting such an experienced and highly-rated individual as Sir Sandy is a validation of our approach to building a long-term, sustainable model capable of being scaled in a high-growth sector.

“We have a strong focus on financial processes, regulation and compliance and Sir Sandy will bring invaluable knowledge and expertise around these issues and in supporting our strategic aims.”

Launched in late 2014, LendingCrowd has facilitated more than £45 million of loans to some 500 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK.

Crombie said: “LendingCrowd has made impressive strides in a relatively short space of time, supporting the growth ambitions of hundreds of businesses.

“This is an exciting time for the business and I look forward to working with Stuart and the rest of the team as the platform scales and delivers even more benefits to SMEs, which are the backbone of the Scottish and UK economies.”